With an increasing semiconductor integration capability and higher analog pin count devices, there is a need for ATE to include analog source/capture instruments that can simultaneously drive and capture multiple analog channels.
One approach is to build a massively parallel instrument by duplicating the architecture of existing instruments. However, this is not a cost effective solution. Providing an economical way to perform multi-channel capture is more challenging.
An economical approach for achieving parallel capture is to use a single converter with multiplexed, parallel inputs. According to this approach, a multiplexor receives multiple signals in parallel and successively switches the inputs to the converter, thereby sharing the converter among the inputs. As the capture needs to be performed serially, however, the disadvantage of this method is the increase in capture time.
There are generally three market goals that a source/capture instrument system attempts to achieve. These are high performance, high density and low cost. Unfortunately, high performance, low-cost instruments generally do not provide high density. Similarly, low-cost, high-density instruments generally do not provide high performance, and high density, high performance instruments are generally not available at a low cost.
Referring now to FIG. 1, a graph is provided showing prior art instruments. The graph shows where various existing test instruments fall within a market space defined by performance, density, and cost. For example, instrument A offers high performance, but at a high cost and low density. Instrument B provides low cost, but suffers from low performance and low density. Instrument C offers high density; however, instrument C has an associated high cost and low performance. None of the instruments offers high performance, high density, and low cost, and none of them is reconfigurable to occupy different positions in the performance-density-cost space.